This review was so well done, I had to share it with my friends who are considering starting up a band. And you thought it would be soooo easy.  ;o)

I saw your blog entry on the xBands.  I’m not so sure I was as keen on the vocalist.  Considering that with maybe 5 exceptions, every song was a female vocal arrangement, by the time I was done listening to the first set, I was kinda tired of her.  I think she was very good, but not so good as to captivate me for an hour.  Their guitar player did a few vocal numbers.  He was not very strong vocally, or more precisely I could not tell. Either their sound guy kept him a little under volume to hide the fact that we was not so strong, or he was falling asleep at the controls.

Overall though these bands had some nice things going.  They were quite tight, playing together stylistically.  Any quibbles I would have on individual playing would be a bit petty as they are much better than us at this time.  I don’t think though that they out of our league for where we can get too.

I remember thinking man, they’re playing 2 one-hour sets.  That’s a lot–then I realized that most of the music were vocal arrangements.  Challenging musically to get right, but not nearly as taxing on the chops.

As my wife and I left she did point out that they were in a completely different league from where we (the Dissonance) were at Christmas.   So we do have some work to do.  I’d like to make sure that when we take the covers off we’re really ready.

We also both agreed that after an hour, we thought it was missing something.  To me the bands looked bored.   Their stage presences weren’t bad.  The horns dance about a little and had some light horn gimmicks integrated, but it seems to lack a lot of spark.   I’m at a loss to define what was missing.

I would draw the following conclusions:

1) The wireless mics seemed to work very nice. They would be expensive and we’d need a sound guy/gal, but I think it is worth considering.

2) I initially liked the stand fronts the horns in most of the bands used, but I wonder if it didn’t block too much of the stage. You could not see the drummer. I wonder if part of the lack of spark was that the horns were almost hidden. When we went to see a Dixie festival last year, there was one band that regardless of their musical prowess (which was good), bored me to tears. They had three things in common with the xBands. Matching cheesy shorts, very little communication with the audience and band fronts. I am coming to the conclusion that band fronts might work well for a dance band, but not a show band.

3) I think if we do dance gigs, something we should be prepared to do, a better mix of vocal and instrumental might give the horns a better chance to shine.

4) I think if we show up at Third Place Books or Crossroads Bellevue, we’d best be prepared to play two hours of mostly dance music depending on the crowd. We need a much thicker book then you’re anticipating, eventually at least.

5) Never ever, under any circumstance, close a set with C-Jam blues. Seriously boring. Sucked the life right off the stage.